gitlab: Run Avocado tests manually (except mainstream CI)

Due to a design problem and misunderstanding between the Avocado
framework and QEMU, Avocado is fetching many asset artifacts it
shouldn't be fetching, exhausting the jobs CI timeout.

Since Avocado artifacts are cached, this is not an issue with old
forks, which already have populated the cache and do not need to
download new artifacts to run the tests.

However this is very confusing to new contributors who start to
fork the project and keep having failing CI pipelines.

As a temporary kludge, add the QEMU_CI_AVOCADO_TESTING variable
to allow old forks to keep running the Avocado tests, while still
allowing new forks to use the mainstream set of CI tests.

Keep the tests enabled by default on the mainstream namespace
which is old enough to have a populated cache, hoping we will
keep this cache long enough until the Avocado/QEMU design issue
is fixed.

Signed-off-by: Philippe Mathieu-Daudé <f4bug@amsat.org>
Reviewed-by: Alex Bennée <alex.bennee@linaro.org>
Message-Id: <20210525082556.4011380-9-f4bug@amsat.org>

diff --git a/.gitlab-ci.d/buildtest-template.yml b/.gitlab-ci.d/buildtest-template.yml
index aabd6c07d2f5dfaae5b2db28f319575a0d42675b..3e3e19d96bdf02cebe5472df108736cd7cbef2b7 100644 (file)
--- a/.gitlab-ci.d/buildtest-template.yml
+++ b/.gitlab-ci.d/buildtest-template.yml
@@ -67,3 +67,15 @@
   after_script:
     - cd build
     - du -chs ${CI_PROJECT_DIR}/avocado-cache
+  rules:
+    # Only run these jobs if running on the mainstream namespace,
+    # or if the user set the QEMU_CI_AVOCADO_TESTING variable (either
+    # in its namespace setting or via git-push option, see documentation
+    # in /.gitlab-ci.yml of this repository).
+    - if: '$CI_PROJECT_NAMESPACE == "qemu-project"'
+      when: always
+    - if: '$QEMU_CI_AVOCADO_TESTING'
+      when: always
+    # Otherwise, set to manual (the jobs are created but not run).
+    - when: manual
+      allow_failure: true

diff --git a/.gitlab-ci.yml b/.gitlab-ci.yml
index 7e4ffab4d1177c6d212539e68c04762ceafe818c..6dc5385e697c07fc61683def840f3fbe7eaa7a18 100644 (file)
--- a/.gitlab-ci.yml
+++ b/.gitlab-ci.yml
@@ -11,5 +11,29 @@
 # configuration path", on your GitLab CI namespace:
 # https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/pipelines/settings.html#custom-cicd-configuration-path
 #
+# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
+#
+# QEMU CI jobs are based on templates. Some templates provide
+# user-configurable options, modifiable via configuration variables.
+#
+# These variables can be set globally in the user's CI namespace
+# setting:
+# https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/variables/#create-a-custom-variable-in-the-ui
+# or set manually each time a branch/tag is pushed, as a git-push
+# command line argument:
+# https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/push_options.html#push-options-for-gitlab-cicd
+#
+# Example setting the QEMU_CI_EXAMPLE_VAR variable:
+#
+#   git push -o ci.variable="QEMU_CI_EXAMPLE_VAR=value" myrepo mybranch
+#
+# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
+#
+# List of environment variables that can be use to modify the set
+# of jobs selected:
+#
+# - QEMU_CI_AVOCADO_TESTING
+#   If set, tests using the Avocado framework will be run
+
 include:
   - local: '/.gitlab-ci.d/qemu-project.yml'